I love TV. I love PC’s. What could be better for me than to combine the two together? Media Center has to be one of the best things I discovered after upgrading to Vista. I had seen a version of Media Center 2005 running on an old Sony Viao laptop, but didn’t think much of it (or even what the point of it was at the time), but after I got an Xbox 360 Elite I thought I hook it up to my Vista Ultimate desktop and give it a try. It started out just playing music and showing people family photos, but I was keen to hit that ‘Setup TV’ button. I bought a Hauppauge Nova-T Dual tuner stick, plugged it all in and I was a very happy boy. It’s great just to be able to sit back and record shows at the touch of a button and pausing Live TV is just fantastic.
I decided to build a dedicated Media Center PC to sit under the TV as I wanted to cut back on the number of devices running just so I could watch live TV. I had to have my desktop PC and my Xbox 360 on, and as everyone knows the 360 is not a quiet beast. I was also redecorating the lounge, so I decided to bury the video/aerial/satellite cables under the carpet and after the carpet was down they wouldn’t reach the desktop PC anymore. I started by making a list of all the things I wanted this new HTPC to do, and design it around that. Here goes:
- Silent (or as quiet as possible)
- Look good under the TV
- Play some games using Xbox 360 controller
- Playback Blu-Ray & HD-DVD movies
- Playback archived DVD’s
- Watch FTA HD (BBC HD to be precise)
- Connect to TV with HDMI & HDCP
- Use one remote control for PC, V & Sony 5.1 amp
Would this all be possible..? Time to find out!
Hardware
I decided to search for the case first as it would be living in my lounge and it needs to look like it belongs there. I came across the mCubed Classic first. This is a beautifully designed case, and also completely silent as it uses heat pipes for the CPU and graphics card connected to the massive heat sinks on the side of the case. Unfortunately the case is very very expensive! Its almost £500 if you add all the parts required for silent running. I then came across the Antec Fusion 430. My desktop PC is built with an Antec P180, which is a great case and very quiet (although a little large). I read a few reviews of the Fusion and it seemed to have everything I wanted so I decided to go with that.
Next on the list is the CPU cooler. I have a Scythe Ninja in my desktop PC and this is wonderfully quiet, so went for the Mini Ninja for the new HTPC case.
Graphics were the next consideration. As this was primarily a Media Center PC, the graphics card didn’t need to be super quick, but did have to be TV friendly. I went with an MSI Nvidia 8500. This isn’t the current generation of video cards but it did have the advantage of being passively cooled and has a HDMI port with HDCP on it.
For the HD drive I went with the LG HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combo. Although HD-DVD is now officially dead, I still have a couple of HD-DVD’s and our online film rental still rents HD-DVD discs.
Lastly we have the TV tuners. I’m a fan of Hauppauge, and I wanted both Freeview, and FTA satellite so went with two Nova-DVB-S2 cards and a Nova 500 Dual Freeview card.
That’s it for part one, in part 2 I’ll be putting all the hardware together.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Might be useful for some if you included links for the hardware you’ve mentioned
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Hi,
Thats all for part 2…
Q
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:06 pm
You might run into an issue with the Hauppauge Nova-T-500 dual tuner card. Although it’s a PCI card the second tuner uses a USB bridge, and whenever the HTPC is restarted or resumes from sleep/standby/hibernation the OS suffers from USB re-enumaration (more often than not). This will result in the 2nd tuner being associated with a new unique entry in the registry. It’s these registry entries that MC uses, and it will think it’s found a new tuner. If you’re not at hand to reconfigure MC, it will continue to think that the 2nd tuner exists because it’s still associated with the old registry entry, however this is no longer associated with the hardware so it will fail to work and you will get missed recordings.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Hi,
I have never experienced the issues with the Nova-T 500 Alexander has commented on. I have used 4 of the cards now (two at home, one in my parents and one in the in-laws machine). All machines are regularly hibernated without issue and apart from the odd motherboard not coming up properly it has never missed a beat.
It may happen but with the experiences I have had with the Nova-T have been fantastic and never anything but rock solid. In fact I shall be getting another one at some point to have multiple tuners in my main VMC.
September 3rd, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I highly recommend the Zalman HD160 Plus case its great and is much better made than the Fusion (built both). Check it out on http://www.zalman.co.kr/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=281
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I would strongly suggest that you include and alternative to having the PC sit in the entertainment center. Building quiet PCs is expensive. Building an HTPC in a closet and running some wires is a lot less expensive. All you need in front of you is the display and wireless receivers. Whens that last time anyone reading this actually worked over to a device to change a control?
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:05 pm
A PC in a cuboard or in a rack somewhere is always a nice idea, but for me I don’t have anywhere like that to put it. Also I wouldn’t want to have to go into a cubboard to reboot the machine or insert a DVD. Its got to be wife freindly afterall!
Q
November 4th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Grant you just made yourself something to do with it,
November 27th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Tammy, You have a lovely site with so many wonderful accolades.,
November 27th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
This is good news, I’m really looking forward to playing around with it once the beta opens up.,
November 27th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
I love the great insight!,